Heavenstone 01 - The Heavenstone Secrets

women. “They gossip too much,” or, “They are obsessed with the wrong priorities.” They were too materialistic or simple. She also said many of them were “vague.”
    What did she mean by that? I asked Cassie. Cassie would never refuse to answer a question. She liked being asked, and she liked my listening to her. She would widen her eyes and put her face so close tomine, I could see the tiny specks of green in her eyes. I was jealous of those specks. They were Mother’s specks.
    “When Mother looks at these vague women, she doesn’t see anyone. They are so vapid and empty she looks right through them. They simply don’t exist.”
    I shook my head. It made no sense. How could they not exist? They were standing right there in front of Mother, weren’t they? I pointed that out and said, “They eat and talk and walk.”
    “So do insects,” Cassie said. “That’s what they are, merely insects.”
    Like Mother, she had a way of pursing her lips after she was critical of someone or something. It was as if they both decided that they would say no more on the subject, not that they didn’t have more to say. They just didn’t want to waste another breath, and as Daddy would say, “When those two get that way, you can’t pry an additional word out of them with a crowbar.”
    Both Cassie and Mother were very efficient. From the moment she rose in the morning to the moment she went to sleep, Mother had something to do. She hated wasting time, which was another reason she had so few friends. She told us that most of the women she knew loved wasting time, spending hours and hours at lunch, sipping coffee, pecking at their food like birds, and then shopping even if they had nothing for which to shop.
    “Leisure,” Mother would say, “has not given these women opportunities to do something significant with their lives. On the contrary, it hastaken those opportunities away. They are no longer important to their families, especially their children. They have nannies when the children are young and, of course, maids and cooks to clean and prepare the meals. They make sure their children are fully occupied with piano lessons or dancing lessons, and if they need help with schoolwork, they hire tutors. They don’t realize it, but they’ve replaced themselves.
    “But perhaps they’re too selfish to care,” she concluded after thinking about her own words for a moment. “Their homes are simply … private hotels.”
    Consequently, despite the size of our home, we had no maids or cooks, and neither Cassie nor I had a tutor. Even if Daddy complained mildly about my average grades, he couldn’t deny that I had the best tutor possible already with us: Cassie, who in my mind knew as much as, if not more than, my teachers did. Before Mother would agree to either piano or dancing lessons, we had to demonstrate to her that we wanted them very much ourselves first. Cassie didn’t want them, but I did. All of my friends were having lessons.
    “I don’t know why you practice the piano and go to dance class, Semantha,” Cassie told me. “You’ll never be a pianist, and you’ll never dance in a professional show. It’s a waste of precious time.”
    I didn’t reply. I tried not to contradict Cassie, but even my silence was defiant to her. She’d go, “Well? Well? Well?” until I had to say, “I guess you’re right.”
    I did eventually stop taking my lessons. Neither Daddy nor Mother tried to get me to change my mind, especially when Cassie pointed out to themthat I might better spend my time trying to improve my grades. The extra time didn’t make much difference, however.
    Somehow, even though she had no piano or dance lessons, Cassie was always very busy. She loved organizing, whether it was her own clothing, groceries in the kitchen pantry, or Daddy’s magazines and newspapers. She inspected our house every day, looking for something out of place or some reason to rearrange things. For this, Daddy or Mother always paid her great compliments. They were both very proud of her.
    Cassie was, of course, an excellent student. She just didn’t do anything else at school, because nothing else was really worth the time or more important than helping Mother look after the house and Daddy. As far as I could tell, that meant boyfriends and school dances weren’t important to her, either, whereas I couldn’t wait for them. It puzzled me that she could be so disinterested in these things. Although we were sisters,